Intel CEO: 'There is competitive fun going on with Apple'

Brian Sozzi
·Executive Editor
2 min read
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Only about a month into the job, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says he has already dropped a dime to Apple CEO Tim Cook in an effort to begin repairing the relationship between the two tech titans.

"So obviously you've seen some of the competitive energies [in chipmaking] resume because there's a lot of great innovation to be done, and we haven't seen PC demand at this level for a decade and a half. The world needs more of that, and there is competitive fun going on with Apple and the Mac ecosystem," Gelsinger told Yahoo Finance Live.

Competitive fun may be a mild understatement.

Recall it was late 2020 when Apple made the long-awaited decision to use chips designed in-house for its Macs. The tech giant's M1 chips are based on Arm architecture as opposed to Intel's x86 chips. The decision effectively ended Apple's roughly 15-year relationship with Intel.

Recently, the tech blogosphere has taken shots at Intel's new "Go PC" ads in an apparent dig at Apple.

Gelsinger said he is hopeful that Intel could win back business from Apple. He is focused on helping Apple manufacture its owns chips through its facilities.

"Apple is a customer, and I hope to make them a big foundry customer because today they're wholly dependent on Taiwan Semiconductor. We want to present great options for them to leverage our foundry services, as well, just like we're working with Qualcomm and Microsoft to leverage our foundry. We're going to be delivering great technology, some things that can't be done anywhere else in the world," Gelsinger explained.

Suffice it to say, Intel will in the not too distant future have the capacity to assist Apple and potentially others like Google and Facebook on the chip production front.

The company revealed a plan on Tuesday to invest $20 billion to build two new factories in Arizona. Intel will also build out capacity to product chips made by others.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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